Ubuntu

Due in part to the feedback given to the group over the weekend and because of their connections with Valve, Canonical did an about-face today. They've suggested that feedback from gamers, Ubuntu Studio, and the WINE community led them to change their plan and will "build selected 32-bit i386 packages for Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 LTS. Whether this will change Valve's future with Ubuntu Steam, we'll see.

The majority of the time that Linux gets dragged in the spotlight is when there are high-profile security bugs that remind people how Linux practically runs the world behind the scenes. This time, however, the controversy is ironically around one of the operating system's weakest points: gaming. A Valve developer just "announced" on Twitter that the company will be dropping support for future releases of Ubuntu and, as expected, it has driven Linux users into a slight frenzied panic.

Modern cars may be computers on wheels, but even Tesla probably wasn't expecting Model 3 owners to go to the effort of rooting the EV and running Ubuntu on it. That's just what one person has spent an estimated 100 hours in doing, though, and in the process confirming exactly what hardware the Model 3's touchscreen-dominated dashboard runs, as well as getting owners of the car tentatively excited about future modifications.

Imagine this scenario. You arrive at work and very gracefully place your smartphone on a specially marked area of your desk. Almost immediately, your desk screen lights up, showing you today's tasks. Before you know it, it's lunch time and you quickly pick up your phone and head to the office cafeteria and use your phone to catch up on your social networks. Later that night at home, you dock your phone to add some finishing touches to your presentation tomorrow before finally plopping down on the couch to stream your favorite nighttime show. That was pretty much the idyllic scenario that companies like Microsoft, Samsung, and even Ubuntu maker Canonical tried to sell the public. But despite that enticing vision, it failed to take hold in the market because, like many future visions, it failed to take into account the hurdles of the present.

Dell is definitely pulling out all the stops, dumping a whole host of computing devices and products, both new and upgraded, even before IFA 2018 starts. We won’t blame you for drowning in the flood but there is a good reason for that. It means that there’s a Dell XPS, Vostro, Inspiron, and even a Dell monitor for any kind of user and every budget under the sun, even those who prefer to use operating systems other than Windows.

Netbooks are often ridiculed as a solution looking for a problem but they are also regarded as the ancestors of present day Chromebooks and “cloudbooks”. With the resurgence of these more modern but still low-performance devices, it might seem that the netbook is due for a revival as well. Or so that seems to be the proposition GPD makes with its almost literal Pocket computer. But does that make more sense now than it did before, especially in an age of powerful smartphones? We take the Ubuntu Edition of the GPD Pocket for a good and thorough testing to find out.

If you’re the sort of technophile that follows Microsoft’s every movement on the Windows front, then you’re probably well aware of how many times Redmond froze hell over with its professed love for Linux and open source. Now it has done so again by making it almost too easy to install Ubuntu, one of the most popular Linux distributions around, right from within the Windows Store, as if you were just installing an app.

Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth has announced that Ubuntu for tablets and phones is dead, and that the Ubuntu desktop OS will be reverting back to GNOME instead of using Unity. It's a major change, one that Shuttleworth describes as 'a very difficult decision.' This spells the end to Canonical's visions of 'the convergence future' -- instead, the company will be focusing on the areas of business that are growing, Shuttleworth explains, which includes servers and VMs, the cloud infrastructure products, and, of course, the desktop, among other things.

GPD, short for GamePad Digital, is a strange beast. More known, in small circles, for its Android-based gaming handhelds, the China-based company last year dabbled in crowdfunding to get GPD WIN, a Nintendo DS-like Windows 10 handheld, out the door. That campaign, those successfully funded and, to some extent, delivered, the campaign received mixed reactions, some of them very vocal, in a negative sense. That hasn’t stopped GPD from trying again and dreaming bigger, this time with the GPD Pocket that’s aimed at more “fashionable” serious workers.

“Ubuntu” and “drones” are probably not two words you’ll come across often, even though both are quite popular in their respective areas. So when Parrot, one of the most famous drone makers, and Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, come out with a special product, it’s hard not to take notice. Painfully spelled as S.L.A.M.dunk, short for “Simultaneous Location and Mapping”, this “drone development kit” piggybacks on a drone, from Parrot preferably, like a Remora fish on shark, giving any drone some autonomous navigation capabilities of its own.

Ubuntu has a very ambitious goal with Ubuntu Touch. It proposed an operating system that could work equally on any capable device, a smartphone that can truly be your computer, no holds barred. That was the promise of Convergence, which we took for a spin with the Meizu PRO 5 smartphone and, before that, the bq Aquaris M10 tablet. The results back then where disappointing yet promising. Ubuntu Touch, as it was when we reviewed these devices, still lacked that punch that would make you truly go "wow!". But, unlike other operating systems, Ubuntu is fast evolving, and the latest OTA-12 brings much needed improvements to bring us closer to true Convergence.

Despite Nokia ex-CEO Stephen Elop's boasts, the smartphone market has indeed become a two-horse race between Android and iOS. Of course, just because those two have pretty much cornered the mobile market doesn't mean there is no room for others, especially those that aren't aiming for world domination. At leat not yet. We're talking here about more unconventional, more "experimental" platforms like, say, Ubuntu Touch. Although already in the commercial market for more than a year, Ubuntu Touch's smartphone promise reaches its full potential in the more muscled Meizu PRO 5 Ubuntu Edition. But does this so far most powerful Ubuntu smartphone live up to the expectations it has set up for itself? It's time to buckle your seat belts and join us for another ride into the somewhat alien world of Ubuntu on Mobile.